Basque Folk Prog

Time to talk about Basque Folk Prog music of the 70's.

In Spain after Franco's regime died with the dictator, the regional cultural autonomies started springing up again and these concerned Galicia, Asturias, Catalonia, Andalusia and the three small Basque provinces (making one region) to different extent.  Rock music was widely available in the 60's where tourists flocked and a few groups existed, but the real start of Spanish prog rock started with Tapiman, Maquinà, Pan Y Regaliz and Smash in the 70 - 71 years.

While Galicia and Asturias have Celtic cultural roots (including local Spanish dialects), Andalusia is more integrated to the main Spanish culture to the point that Flamenco became Spain's main musical trait in tourist's eyes. But nowhere were the cultural differences greater than in the Northeast with Catalonia and the Pais Vasco (Basque Provinces) where they have very different languages. In Catalonia, there were groups that had jazz-rock roots (Iceberg for one) but also was the cradle of the Spanish rock revolution, but did not carry out a revolt theme (even if Catalonia dispute Spanish language, they all understand it because it is very close to it and French) and Catalonia is ahead of the rest of Spain economically speaking.

In the Basque region, however, the groups had very strong cultural identity and strong folk roots. As soon as 75, two groups released their first albums and the region will see many more artistes releasing Basque-sung records, all of which were proudly Basque and if not calling for separation, these groups had followers with the autonomous movements (I will not pretend anything regarding ETA). If those groups all sung in their native Basque language, making their text incomprehensible to most, most of those group who received Cd re-issues  have their lyrics translated both in Spanish and in French.

Now, for these regional products to be released back then and reissued now, it takes a rather specialized label and it appears that three of them were responsible for 95% of Basque Folk Prog output. Ioio, Elkar and Xoxo, of which most of their respective catalogue were regrouped on the Elkar label which had a partnership with Lost Vinyl records for their first Cd re-issues in the early 90’s, but now getting a second reissue on Elkar proper.

- One of the first groups is Haizea, which released two records, the first being very Fairport Convention-like while the second Hontz Gaua is simply astounding with a side-long track delving from Gregorian chants to psychedelic influences. This second record is still uncertain as to its release date, some pretending as far as 79.

http://www.progarchives.com/Progressive_rock_discography_BAND.asp?band_id=588

Well, i got interested since i saw this thread, and found some good links which offers great info about this Basque scene, you may be interested as well.